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Precipitation Drives Frugivory in a Subtropical Generalist Herbivore, the Gopher Tortoise, and Alters its Functional Role as a Seed Disperser
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  • Adrian Figueroa,
  • Pavel Chernyavskiy,
  • Michael Greenacre,
  • Alyssa Herrera,
  • Lydia Cuni,
  • Jennifer Villate,
  • Mauro Galetti,
  • Hong Liu,
  • Steven Whitfield
Adrian Figueroa
University of Florida

Corresponding Author:adr.fig.phd@gmail.com

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Pavel Chernyavskiy
University of Virginia
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Michael Greenacre
Universitat Pompeu Fabra
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Alyssa Herrera
Florida International University
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Lydia Cuni
Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden
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Jennifer Villate
Florida International University
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Mauro Galetti
Universidade Estadual Paulista Julio de Mesquita Filho
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Hong Liu
Florida International University
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Steven Whitfield
Audubon Nature Institute
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Abstract

Consumers employ a variety of foraging strategies, and oftentimes the foraging strategy employed is related to resource availability. As consumers acquire resources, they may interact with their resource base in mutualistic or antagonistic ways – falling along a mutualism-antagonism continuum – with implications for ecological processes such as seed dispersal. However, patterns of resource use vary temporally, and textbook herbivores may switch foraging tactics to become more frugivorous in periods of greater fleshy fruit availability. In this study, we investigated how fleshy fruit consumption of a generalist herbivore – the gopher tortoise (Gopherus polyphemus) – shifts intra-annually following seasonal precipitation and subsequently examined how this shift toward increased frugivory influences the suite of plant syndromes dispersed. We noted a clear intra-annual shift toward a more frugivorous diet which coincided with seasonal precipitation and subsequently observed a marked shift in the plant syndromes dispersed with increasing frugivory. We found that as this generalist herbivore became more frugivorous, it dispersed a greater variety of plant syndromes at low levels of frugivory. However, when the gopher tortoise exhibited high levels of frugivory, the seed load was dominated by those exhibiting the Endozoochory syndrome. This study illustrates a functional shift in a seed dispersing herbivore toward that of a classical frugivore, suggesting that temporal variation in foraging strategy and the temporal scale in which foraging habits and seed dispersal interactions are quantified have implications for the suite of plant syndromes species disperse. Furthermore, tradeoffs may exist that provide plants with the Endozoochory syndrome with a competitive advantage over seeds with contrasting traits, such as the Foliage is the Fruit syndrome which is expected to experience greater dispersal by classical herbivores.
30 Jul 2024Submitted to Ecology and Evolution
31 Jul 2024Submission Checks Completed
31 Jul 2024Assigned to Editor
01 Aug 2024Reviewer(s) Assigned